The right to health data protection and the right to information, further than the right to privacy, according to the Spanish Constitution

Abstract

The new laws for the protection of personal data, both at European and at national level, point to a greater specification on the regulation of this category of sensitive data which, in principle, should provide greater clarity to the treatment of information concerning this type of data and, more specifically, the health message. However, if the regulatory development is exceeded, as it may have happened with the Organic Law 3/2018, the interpretation of the theoretical basis of the protected right may throw a halo of legal lack of accuracy. The sections of this Law begin by defining the basic regulation for the exercise of the right to the protection of personal data, stating that it will be done in accordance with the provisions of both Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and the Spanish Organic Law itself; consequently, this is the legal framework by which the data relative to the health of the people are governed. In the same section, the Spanish legislator introduces, for the first time, specifically, the recognition of the protection of personal data as a fundamental right of natural persons in line with what is precisely stated in Regulation (EU) 2016/679 which should be developed by the Spanish Act.
However, a constitutional basis is added to the right that concerns us, its guarantee being placed under the protection of article 18.4 of the Spanish Constitution concerning the rights to honour and to privacy. This asset is not included in the European Regulation, and it might happen that by inserting it in the content of the Law, the defence of the right to information that also underlies the information self-determination could vanish into thin air, thus tipping the balance against the right to receive one´s own health information as a part of the whole right to information.